New Technology Park Pilot
FPV cameras
Lucas Weakley
lucas.weakley@gmail.com
>>
FPV stands for First-Person View, and that view is
arguably the most important in having a successful and enjoyable experience when fl ying an RC aircraft from the perspective of an onboard pilot. The choice of transmission frequency, antenna positioning and styles, and image devices (such as video goggles or monitors) can all affect the quality of the view from your aircraft, but the camera you choose will affect it the most. There are numerous
cameras that you can use for FPV, many of which are adapted from other applications such as security
systems and sport event recording. I’ll explain the advantages and disadvantages of these different cameras, and hopefully help you decide on the perfect view for your aircraft. The board style is the fi rst
major category of cameras. These are simple sensors and lenses mounted to a circuit board with connections for power and analog video out (making them perfect to plug into standard video transmitters). These cameras are usually inexpensive, so a very good one will cost you approximately $60, but they can be more expensive based on additional features that can help you when fl ying. Board cameras are also
the simplest and come in all different shapes and sizes. They usually have mounting holes already in the board, and are small enough to
These micro-board cameras can be mounted directly onto the video transmitter and plugged into LiPo battery charge cables for power, resulting in a tiny, lightweight FPV setup.
fi t into the fuselage of an airplane with the lens poking out of the nose, or directly mounted between frame plates on a multicopter. Besides being easy to
mount and set up, board cameras have many performance benefi ts. First off, they’re not HD (high defi nition). How is that a benefi t? Well, FPV transmitters only send out a 640 x 480-pixel resolution image. Having a camera that
The Security Camera 2000 (
securitycamera2000.com) line of FPV board cameras is a great place to start. They are inexpensive, have easily changeable lenses, and even come with a menu controller to change all necessary settings.
44 PARK PILOT [Winter 2016]
gives the transmitter a higher-quality image isn’t necessary since you’ll never see that image quality on the ground unless you have one of the new fancy HD video transmitters such as the DJI Lightbridge (
dji.com) or the CONNEX by Amimon HD FPV system (http://connex.
amimon.com). When an FPV transmitter
has to send a 1,080p image in a 480p resolution, the image can be fuzzy depending on how the transmitter downsizes the resolution. When the camera gives the transmitter the same resolution that it transmits, the image received on the ground is actually much sharper. One of the downsides of
board cameras is that they can’t locally record. They are designed to be used with security systems that record many cameras from one location. Some have SD card slots, but the image isn’t HD if image quality is an issue. Another workaround is to
record the received image (the same image you would fl y from); however, you will inevitably see static and signal interference in the recording. Because board cameras are
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
